Scientific disagreements happen all the time. But when 'scientists' deny human-induced global warming, elevating the contrarian view to convey the pretence of scientific disagreements among experts, it has to be called out, argues Rupen Savoulian.
Climate change denial and scepticism
Damon Gameau is an environmentalist who wants to go beyond the dire facts of the impending climate catastrophe, writes Barry Healy.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has taken the unusual step of personally telling Senator Malcolm Roberts he was "mistaken" in his claim that the agency had falsified key data to exaggerate warming in the Arctic. He expressed surprise that Roberts had actually been elected as a Senator.
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts held a press conference on November 7 to release a 42-page document that claims the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology corrupted climate data and that global warming is an international Jewish banking conspiracy to gain global control through environmentalism.
Climate science denialists will often fool people, and sometimes themselves, by cherrypicking the bits of evidence they think fit their argument.
At other times, they’ll construct elaborate conspiracy theories about human-caused climate change being a front for a New World Order, with the United Nations as the Illuminati.
But often, they just get things badly, horribly, terribly and embarrassingly wrong.
The federal election is now over and the final outcome is still being worked out, but the winners and losers are becoming clearer by the day.
The two biggest losers were the major parties. While the Coalition retained enough seats to still be able to govern, it lost its sizable majority in the lower house and is facing an even more hostile Senate.
The Labor Party recovered several seats overall, but it still managed to record its second lowest number of votes in a Federal election since World War II.
The federal government has withdrawn an offer to provide $4 million to any Australian university willing to host climate sceptic Bjorn Lomborg and his “Consensus Centre”.
Staff at Flinders University in Adelaide, where management had been considering the proposal, welcomed the news.
National Tertiary Education Union Flinders University branch president Ron Slee said, “Today's decision is a welcome relief for a university community that has been relentless in its campaign to protect against the reputational damage that would inevitably travel with the Lomborg money.”
In a period of so-called “budget emergency” when deep funding cuts are being imposed on universities and scientific research, the federal government has managed to find $4 million for a “consensus centre” headed by advocate for climate inaction Bjørn Lomborg.
The $13 million centre will form part of the University of Western Australia’s (UWA) business school, with the Commonwealth contributing $4 million over four years.